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Global Multi Club Ownership Soars to 444 Clubs Worldwide | Steve Menary posted on the topic | LinkedIn
Multi club ownership (MCO) now extends to all six of FIFA’s regional confederations. There are at least 444 clubs around the world whose owners or significant shareholders have cross-ownership stakes with another club.
Nearly 60% of those clubs are in Europe and, globally, 53% are in the top division. There are now more topflight clubs just in Europe in cross ownership than there were clubs around the world in MCO when I first started compiling a list in 2021.
Then, I found 117 clubs with stakes held by 45 MCO groups for World Soccer. So, has the number of clubs in MCO quadrupled in the last five years?
Making year-on-year comparisons is not realistic as some stakes are hidden. Only this week, I was told about one cross-ownership that has existed for at least three years but so far remains undisclosed.
Not all investments or takeovers necessarily go through as Jason Stephens pointed out recently in one of his many excellent slide decks.
Some MCO groups offloaded stakes, but new links continue to emerge and 446 clubs is an under-estimate given the inevitable number of hidden links.
There are, of course, examples of multi club ownership brining real benefits, but as a concept it remains highly problematic at multiple levels because MCO is not necessarily about football.
Wealthy individuals and investment firms are buying clubs for business leverage, financial speculation, or elite networking - often at the expense of fans and the financial stability of the clubs as Philippe Auclair and I revealed last spring in an MCO series for Play the Game.
The implosion of 777 Partners as so well chronicled by Philippe and Paul Brown for Josimar was a lesson on the problems created by MCO and it was good to discuss these in October with Paul, anti-money laundering specialist Filip Brokes and Florian Petrica, PhD from the University of Bucharest at the 2025 Play the Game in Tampere.
As club valuations rose, investors formed consortia. Allied to a rise in club partnerships and the sale of whole portfolios, effective regulation of increasingly complicated ownership landscape MCO at a macro level is virtually impossible.
FIFA was finally forced to take some action due to its creation of the Club World Cup, while UEFA's latest rules effectively allow investors to control a single club in each of its three competitions.
Some investors, particularly from the US, relish European sports ownership as the cost of entry is more realistic than North America, and in some cases appear to do a good job, but the figures in some investment slide decks are highly optimistic at best, disingenuous at worst.
Implosions from 777 to FC32 caused real problems that others, often fans, had to deal with.
The Cambridge Dictionary’s definition of invest is: “to put money into a project, or to buy property, shares in a company, etc., hoping to make a profit or get an advantage.”
Getting to the root of what advantage is being sought remains the challenge for anyone dealing with MCO. | 11 comments on LinkedIn
